Some PR assignments were more fun than others.

Pippa was still putting a lot of her work effort into making Sabine seem more... human. (Irony.) It got easier after they shared a watery near death experience, because now she knew Sabine was indeed not a bad person. (Also, capable of human emotion.). Still, in the world of Public Relations it was never enough to be a decent person. You had to look like one too.

Which is why they were going to a baseball game.

Having the director of SUPER out in the open without a security detail was a risk, especially in the light of recent attempts. Which is why two lucky undercover agents were also going to the game, in civilian clothes and strict orders to purchase hot dogs. But Pippa wanted this to look natural, and in order to do so, it also had to feel natural. No media attention, just some guerilla social media. Hey, is that the lady that runs SUPER? Well, she's SUPER hot.

Influencers.

Pippa accompanied Sabine purely as a professional courtesy. And because it would have raised a lot more questions if she went alone. She was dressed semi-casual, with lower heels than usual and a 50s style skirt, more "girl on her day off" than "professional PR person." It had been ages since she had been to a game. Maybe this one would be fun.

"Try to act natural." she told Sabine as they took their seats (good seats, carefully chosen, but not the best, no need to show off). "Stop trying to find the agents. You look like you are casing the joint."

Ever since the battleship, Sabine made a habit of keeping Pippa close by. They never got confirmation who the target of that night's attack was, so if it turned out to be Pippa, Sabine felt the need to keep her safe from any new attempts on the peppy blonde's life. Pippa, to her credit, did not make it hard to keep her around, pushing her concern about Sabine's public image. A public image, for the record, Sabine historically cared very little about.

But at least this time, when Pippa suggested her newest plan, it involved a Yankees game. There were worst ways to be dragged to a PR event.

Except it wasn't even a PR event. According to Pippa, the whole point was to make this seem normal and relatable. Sabine did her part by wearing a jersey--one that fit her snugly, rather than loosely. Apparently Pippa was not above using Sabine's looks to their advantage. With that reasoning in mind, Sabine did her part by picking out shorts that she forgot she owned and offered up plenty of her best feature: her legs.

"I am acting natural," she quipped, being caught looking around. "Or I will be. You've managed to drag me to a place I'm actually excited to spend the day enjoying. Even if I could have caught this game from my balcony." A very specific reason Sabine got her apartment and paid extra each month for the luxury.

Looking over Pippa, Sabine grinned. "Speaking of acting natural, you look way too pretty for a Yankees game, you know."

Pippa was not entirely comfortable with being out in the open like this, but she trusted the agents to know what they were doing. And she trusted Sabine, whom she was a part of her job to show off in a more human capacity.

>>"I am acting natural. Or I will be. You've managed to drag me to a place I'm actually excited to spend the day enjoying. Even if I could have caught this game from my balcony."

"Yeah, people don't like a showoff, especially when she has cash to spend" Pippa smirked, taking a seat. It was the reason why they didn't just get the best seats in the stadium.

>>"Speaking of acting natural, you look way too pretty for a Yankees game, you know."

"Thank you" she grinned, adjusting her gloves. "But hey, I'm naturally pretty."

The game was about to start. Pippa didn't know as much about baseball as Sabine used to. "Are you going to jump and yell?"

Sabine was rarely accused of being a showoff, but that was because she rarely gave people cause to think she had money. Her suits were fashionable and tailored, but she was a high-ranking government official; people expected that. The rest of her life was frugal and mundane. Sabine was not showy, but she let her balcony view be her one indulgence. Most people had no clue about her private refuge up there, but Pippa knew now and could tease her for it.

Unlike Sabine, Pippa was great at taking compliments, letting her confidence and charisma carry her. "And I'm the showoff. Though it's good; pretty women should be allowed to know it and own it." And Pippa owned it.

The opening traditions, like the anthem and the opening pitch were quickly out of the way and the game was starting properly. Sabine, for once, looked carefree. "I'll tastefully watch and clap. Unless there's a home run. If we hit a home run, I will probably jump and cheer and you will pretend you saw nothing when today is all over."

Sabine watched the battle between a pitcher and a stubborn hitter, but the scene as growing darker. Odd; was there an overcast forecast today? She could have sworn she saw bright and sunny, but the light in the stadium kept growing dimmer...

>> "And I'm the showoff. Though it's good; pretty women should be allowed to know it and own it."

Pippa smiled. She was not a fan of fake modesty. And she liked the skirt. She rested her feet against the back of the seat in front of her, mostly due to the fact that she did not like to dangle them. The opening ceremonies of the game got done in an orderly fashion, and finally the actual sporting began. Pippa blinked, leaning forward as the sunshine suddenly disappeared, giving way to an early evening gloom.

>>"I'll tastefully watch and clap. Unless there's a home run. If we hit a home run, I will probably jump and cheer and you will pretend you saw nothing when today is all over."

"So, no videos then?" Pippa smirked, but then she blinked rapidly again, as the stadium continued to darken. She looked up, and she wasn't the only one; people all around were all peering at the sky, expecting to see dark storm clouds (or maybe, given New York's track record, a giant alien spaceship). The sky, however, seemed clear. And yet, it was getting darker by the moment. An anxious murmur spread over the stadium.

"Sabine, what's happening?" Pippa asked, glancing around. The game stopped, and the murmur was getting louder. Soon, she could only make out Sabine's figure in the dark... and then she was gone too.

"Sabine?... Are you here?"

The murmur turned into shouting, and the shouting filled the darkness.
There would be calls to the emergency services soon.

Sabine really thought she had a good day ahead of her. The stars were aligning for the stubborn, serious senior agent to take a real day to herself. PR purposes aside, she was going to watch her favorite sport, spend time with a person she was honestly enjoying the company of lately, and just acting like a normal person.

So of course the f**king sky would go dark.

The darkness deepened, cloaking everything in a false night, until it became more than that. Either Sabine and several thousand people could not see, or the entire stadium was pitch black.

Pippa's voice asked for her through the darkness and Sabine reached over, finding her shoulder (she hoped) before moving down to take her hand. She heard the tension in the voices rising up. Things were ready to turn sour. "I'm here. Something's screwing with everyone's vision, so stay close. Don't lose me, okay?"

Sure enough, the tension was breaking into shouting and the sounds of feet shuffling. Feet shuffling in the dark in stadium seating was quickly going to lead into injuries and a potential riot, so Sabine used the non-Pippa hand to grab her phone from her back pocket. She didn't need to call SUPER; someone else would do that.

"This is SUPER Agent Sabine Sang," she called out over the escalating volume of the Stadium. "We have a supernatural blackout at Yankee's Stadium. A panic is forming and we're heading into state of emergency territory..."

Something touched her arm and Pippa jumped, before realizing it was Sabine's hand. Two out of two. Going out anywhere with this woman tended to end in them holding hands and running for their lives.

>>"I'm here. Something's screwing with everyone's vision, so stay close. Don't lose me, okay?"

"Yes sure okay" Pippa grabbed on to Sabine's hand as the murmur grew louder. People were beginning to panic. THe plastic seats shook as more and more of them stood up and stumbled.

>>"This is SUPER Agent Sabine Sang. We have a supernatural blackout at Yankee's Stadium. A panic is forming and we're heading into state of emergency territory..."

"So... you think it's just us? Or did... the lights just go out for the entire city?..." someone bumped into Pippa and she stumbled, then plopped down onto a seat and pulled her knees up. "I have a new plan. We just stay inside, and keep ordering takeout until your reputation is improved through fast food companies alone."

AJ had thought it was a power trip to drive in an Emergency Medical Services truck. He was no stranger to weaving through traffic and jumping curbs. What he wasn't used to was doing it with 50,000 pounds of force and threat. People pulled over for EMS sometimes. People absolutely got out of the way for the fire truck he was riding with toward the scene of a potential medical emergency.

He was moonlighting with a fancy new license after passing the firefighter’s fitness test. Carrying 300lb over his shoulders was just another Tuesday. If he’d known that was all that was standing between him and a pay raise, he would have started Fire EMS training way sooner.

The driver honked as they neared the baseball stadium, the scene they’d been called to for generic emergency reasons. The place had gone dark, according to the radio, and they were supposed to help get the lights back on and help any of the panic stampede victims.

Only, it was daylight, still. And nothing really seemed amiss in AJ’s eyes as he leaned forward toward the driver to see out the front window.

People were stumbling around. Cars had been fleeing as they drove in, but the closer they got to the stadium entryway, the more AJ noted chaos: people stumbling and bumping blindly. There was a definite difference in how a sighted person behaved when they lost their most relied-upon sense. These people weren’t just in a blind panic. They were acting totally blind: running into poles, walls, and other obvious obstructions.

“What a f***ing sh*t-show.”

The fire truck nudged through a tight opening between vehicles and rolled to a stop as near to the stadium as they could manage without running over any of the people blindly stumbling around. The team lead had been talking scenarios and how it might be a large-scale gas leak, but the debate in the back died off as soon as the engine cut.

“Dude. Not funny. Whatever you did to make it dark, cut it out.”

AJ sat back in his jump seat to grab the kit beneath his chair and as he moved, the fireman next to him claimed that things got better while the driver started complaining…

Eventually, they came up with the dumbest plan.

They walked as a team, each member keeping one hand on AJ while AJ held the fire hose. They hadn’t hooked it up to a hydrant, the hose was functionally a rope for people to follow back to the truck and from the truck, they knew it was only a few more feet to the point where they could see again: the edge of the anomaly.

They steered toward any obvious injuries first and captured as many able bodied people, explaining the hose thing to any who would listen which imposed some small amount of order, at least in the section of stadium that they had entered.

AJ for his part felt rather silly. He could see a lot of crazy, a lot of panic, and a lot of… were those swat team members? They were dressed in black and repelling from the upper nosebleed section, right toward a woman who was seated and hugging her knees and… familiar?

”Pippa?” He wasn’t supposed to. He was absolutely stranding his team. But he couldn’t just watch whatever was about to happen. They had guns and she was just sitting there totally unaware.

AJ stuffed the hose into the hands of the firefighters he’d come in with and vaulted over an empty section of seating.

”Pippa get down!” He roared, afraid he wouldn’t be heard over the din.

Sabine was not one to invade people's personal space, but she knew how chaotic things could get with a mass of people, and that was before you put those people in the perpetual dark. She was not about to admit it, but with how few people Sabine kept in her life, Pippa was becoming the person Sabine spent more time with than anyone else. She was not going to let Pippa get hurt for having Sabine around.

There was a shift as Pippa changed her position. "Comms say HQ isn't reporting a random blackout. I think you have the right idea of it; let's just Binge and chill until I'm wonderfully non-threatening." She had heard that phrase around, so it sounded like it applied to the life of retreating from the public eye and binging on fast food.

The comms were buzzing with some feedback, but no one knew what was going on. Through the clamoring of people trying to blindly shuffle around each other, Sabine heard someone call out Pippa's name. She doubted her men would be shouting for Pippa, but the voice sounded concerned and Sabine was suspicious. She had to shelve those suspicions when the voice shouted for Pippa to get down. He knew something they didn't.

Sabine finally recognized one of the sounds she was hearing in the crowd. The whirring sound of someone coming down a rope. There was no backup coming down here; she would have known. She heard the first set of feet touch down behind them and jumped into action. She could not see anything, but she let go of Pippa's hand, turning to lunge over her seat. She banged her knee on the cement behind her chair's back, but she felt what she assumed were legs, which she drive her shoulder into the shins of hard.

>>"Comms say HQ isn't reporting a random blackout. I think you have the right idea of it; let's just Binge and chill until I'm wonderfully non-threatening."

"I don't think that means..."

The seats shook again. People were still in a panic, but mostly gone from their section, making for the exits, Pippa assumed. Sabine was still holding her hand, which was good, because they were not going anywhere anytime soon. It wasn't a blackout. It had to be a mutant thing.

>>”Pippa get down!”

Suddenly, Sabine's hand was gone. Pippa yelped and curled into a ball, lying down on the seats; she did not dare throw herself to the ground, too afraid people were still fleeing. She felt helpless and useless, lying there with the sounds of a struggle over her. Sabine was fighting blind. Maybe she should be fighting too. But she was not the one yelling. It was another familiar voice.

"... AJ?..."

Didn't she say there'd been threats? Didn't she say she'd almost been kidnapped or something? AJ really wished he'd paid more attention or asked more questions because he was pretty sure he was seeing this play out in real life right here and now. She'd made it sound past tense!

AJ went over the seats because most people were making their way to the aisles. It was the fastest way, to jump from the top of one row to the top of the next. It also, in conjunction with the shouting, made him an easy to pick out target. The people repelling down turned their faces (and guns) toward him. It was hard to tell if they could see since the group all sported matching gas-mask like face coverings. They could definitely hear, though.

Which didn't exactly matter when a woman nearby did some crazy ninja maneuver and clobbered one.

Oh. Okay yeah. Definitely the way to go. "To your right!"

Wait. Where had Pippa gone?

It was his last coherent thought as AJ shouted inarticulately and jumped at the mass of black-clad bodies. He was by no means the smooth control of the clobbering woman, but he had mass and momentum on his side. He landed on two bodies and they all went down in a pile of arms and legs and a spilled stadium beer. The rapport of a gun sounded from the struggle puddle. Fired on accident into who-knows-what.

AJ wasn't a fighter. He'd had some small element of surprise in that, even he wasn't sure he'd be crazy enough to jump in. As soon as they got their wits back, it was AJ who would be in zip ties. Maybe Pippa had the chance to get away and ran.

The last standing man could go to ninja girl, assuming she had the wherewithal to turn right and ninja again. Wherever she'd dumpstered the first guy, AJ hoped he wasn't getting up again.

Fighting in the dark was, to put it lightly, less than ideal. Sabine knew Yankee Stadium well, but not so well she could dive around the stands blind. Even worse, if these people were dropping in, she had to assume they could see. She had to hope that, if they wanted her dead, they would have shot her by now. The sounds of magazines in a firearm were distinct.

The voice called out a direction and Sabine did not have a better way to make her next move. He shouted Pippa's name, so she had to hope he was on their side. Scrambling to her sore knee, Sabine blocked her face with her forearms in time to block a strike from what she guessed might be a thin metal baton. It hurt like a thin metal baton, that was for damn sure.

Sabine lashed out with her hand, trying to pry the baton out of its controller's gloved hands. There was a nearby kerfuffle, but a gunshot made Sabine's blood run cold. "Pippa!" If they were shooting someone and Sabine had no searing bullet wounds, she jumped to the most concerning possibility.

Finally winning the struggle, Sabine swung higher than her head. She was on the shorter end, so if she was going to swing wildly, she should aim high. Her first swing collided with metal and she realized the man had raised his firearm at her. The second strike hit a mask. Whatever it was, it was more concerned with sealing them than protecting them from strikes, because he went down in two blows to the head.

Sabine climbed to her feet, repeating, "Pippa! Tell me you're still okay!" Pippa could have run with any luck, but if that chance never came, it would ease Sabine's mind knowing she was still... well, that she could answer. Once she knew that, she could call out to the male voice who seemed in less immediate danger.

Everyone was fighting. There was grunting and clanging and the sounds of various impacts. Sabine was fighting blind, which was not a great thing to do, especially if the opponent could see. Could they see? Pippa was sure she was still a pretty easy target herself, curled up on the seats. Sh*t.

Why was everyone yelling her name?

Someone went down. A shot went off. Something punched Pippa in the shoulderblade.

>>"Pippa! Tell me you're still okay!"

"I'm okay! I'm OW!" adrenaline could only block out the pain for so long.

OW.

Pippa tried to reach the back of her shoulder with one hand; there was blood leaking down her side. Also.

"MOTHERF*** OW"

Was she shot? That would be a first. It certainly felt like she was shot. Not right deep, but in a place that was not easy to put a hand on.

"I'M... FINE"

Not fine.

"Can neither of you die please?... Owww... AJ?"

AJ was not a fighter. He had taken an oath to do no harm and given the kind of person he was, he figured he should be able to talk his way out of any fights before they happened for real. He had never in his wildest daydreams thought he would actually take swing at another human. Sure, maybe he'd thought about it, but the doing was very different than he expected.

For starters, when he punched the masked face, his hand hurt. The movies made it look pretty easy and certainly nobody pulled their hand back with an "ow" that was echoed in a woman's voice over the seats.

AJ's head whipped to the side as he took a blow to the chin. He'd already been trying to look that way since the voice... that was Pippa. And if he heard Pippa, that meant Pippa had not, in fact, run away. And had, in fact, gotten hurt.

He swung harder, sending the guy beneath him rocking back and his... no, actually her face mask askew. He'd been scrabbling with a lady and really did not know how to feel about that.

The man at the bottom of the pile managed to wriggle out from the scrum. AJ didn't have a braincell to spare on that at the moment.

He was trying to put his body between the user and the gun that had already gone off once—the likely, but hopefully not too serious reason for Pippa's shouting of "ow." The gun was on a strap, so he couldn't get it totally out of the bad guy's hands, so AJ had rolled into the woman beneath him to put his back against her and get his body between her and the gun. She wasn't letting him have it though and in the struggle that followed, the gun went off again.

AJ saw it. The woman beneath him was so close that she saw it as well.

The last masked man had been reaching down to pull AJ off the woman and he took the shot right in the gut.

AJ's hearing was entirely gone, ears ringing from two too close shots. The woman beneath him was frozen rigid in shock over what had just happened. The shot man collapsed across their legs. There really wasn't time to process. His first instinct was to go to the victim, but as AJ lurched forward, he realized that would leave the woman with the gun at his back. And that while the fallen man was a human who deserved dignity in death, he also still had a gun on his person and an unknown agenda.

"No. Nononono." The woman moved toward the fallen man and her hands darted around like confused butterflies. "I can't see. I can't- Kurt."

AJ moved carefully to unhook the strap that kept the gunwoman's semi-automatic attached, feeling any fast movements would be enough to snap her back to her senses. He sneaked the weapon away from the unmasked woman, tempted to yeet it into outer space but... there were kids here. He couldn't just leave it and he definitely didn't want to leave it with her.

"I'm here." AJ moved away from the tragedy unfolding behind him and slid into the seat next to Pippa so that the woman he knew was between him and the one he didn't know. If it hadn't been the gut... if he had seen the man move even once after he took that shot...

"Hold this, please. Where are you hurt?" He thought he said it, but it may have come out as a shout. AJ shoved the gun toward Pippa and tried to trace the blood trail up her back. He could assess her, decide if she could be moved or not, and then they could all fuck right off into the sunset for all he cared. But there was no skipping step 1.

If Sabine was not shot, and it sounded like she was not the target, she could assume they were not looking to kill her. They had clean shots and she was clearly going to make herself their problem. She had some freedom to cause havok, then, though all plans had an upper threshold for the bullshit they were willing to accommodate. Sabine simply had the opportunity to find out how much trouble it was worth to keep her alive.

A fist made contact with her face from, as she was warned, her right. The hit dazed her, but the gloved hand offered some padding to soften the blow enough not to stagger her. Now she knew where an arm was, so her new best friend, Baton the baton, whacked at the space in front of her. Maybe an elbow, maybe a forehead; it was hard to guess, but occasionally she hit something with a resounding clunk that felt good.

Eventually, when she took a swing, there was nothing in front of her. Either the attacker was on the ground or backed off. Sabine took the opportunity to limp hastily back toward a voice apparently checking on Pippa.

Much to her surprise, the light of the world came back, stunning her eyes until the adjusted and she could see the chaos of the stadium clearly. People were tripping over each other, fighting blind with whoever got in their way. She could relate, but it posed the question of why she could suddenly see.

Sabine looked immediately to Pippa once she was recalibrated, surveying her. "Did someone try to get to you? And where did you get a gun?" She shifted her gaze to the man inspecting Pippa. If he was with the strike squad, they did an amazing job planting him, but that was still a possibility she had to be on guard for. "Who are you? And why can I..."

It was obvious. She did get her bell rung, so it took a few seconds to get there, but she recognized the sensation of suddenly being unaffected by some mutation-born oddity. "A Kappa," she muttered to herself. "You're an Adapted, yes? Can you tell me what I missed and how you got here?" There was a lot to process and no time to do it, so she was trying to get a handle on anything she could in the seconds she had.